


An Honest Man

by china_shop



Category: White Collar
Genre: Fic, Gen, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-03
Updated: 2010-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/china_shop/pseuds/china_shop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you can't con an honest man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Honest Man

This is what Peter knows about cons: a man bumps into you in a bar, in a train station, in a coffee shop. It doesn't matter where. You get to talking. He shows you something beautiful, something magnificent, something you shouldn't want, something you can't live without. It's on the gray side of legal, but he tells you it's yours. There's a sure-fire way you can take it home with you, he says. No one will ever know. You just have to take a little risk.

Five hundred dollars on the table, and you'll make a couple of thousand. A nudge and a wink, and no one's the wiser.

Neal Caffrey's body is a con, and yes, Peter's tempted. He fantasizes about Neal's body the way most people dream about winning the lottery: constructing elaborate scenarios about where they'd go, what Neal would do to him, how he'd smile, where Peter would lick first.

But it wouldn't be five hundred dollars on the table, or five thousand. For this, the stakes would be Peter's reputation, his career, his marriage. So however much he wants, he resists.

You can't con an honest man, and Peter has a lot of consciences: Elizabeth, Jones, Hughes. People who look up to him, who keep him honest. He's grateful for them, of course he is, but sometimes they only accentuate the feeling that it's him and Neal against the world. Peter's on a leash too, and it chafes, just like Neal's anklet.


End file.
